When Sparrows Fall (12 page)

“No more of that. Clean it up, gentlemen—carefully.”

They ran, arguing about who would hold the dustpan. Timothy followed them out, but Rebekah moved toward the broken glass.

“Hold on, now,” Jack said. “They made the mess, so they’ll clean it up.”

She nodded but bent over and leaned the picture against the wall, loose glass tinkling. The frame held a black and white photo of a lily. It was a good, interesting composition but all wrong for a boys’ room.

After Rebekah left, Jack lingered. He’d never seen the room in daylight. No self-respecting boy would have chosen to hang his baby quilt on the wall, but three of them hung there, with a name embroidered in the lower right corner of each one. Timothy. Michael. Gabriel. These quilts were a smaller version of the cuddle-quilt the kids were always dragging around with them.

At least they were done in masculine color schemes. Browns, dark blues, rich greens. Jonah’s, in shades of gray and blue, lay on one of the lower bunks, still in use. Red and blue plaid comforters, all alike, covered the beds.

“What happened?” Miranda called with panic in her voice.

Nobody answered. Not even Rebekah or Timothy. Jack smiled at their loyalty. They didn’t want to rat on their brothers, so they’d left it up to him.

He descended the stairs, asking himself what he would have done if the sound of breaking glass had signaled a true emergency. He wasn’t up on first aid.

The archangels charged up the stairs with broom and dustpan. Jack pressed against the wall to let them pass, then proceeded to Miranda’s room.

“What happened?” she asked again. Her skin was pale beneath the bruises and scrapes.

Of course. The sudden crash had sent her and the older kids into a harrowing flashback to the sounds of disaster. Maybe she relived Carl’s accident with every loud noise. Maybe she saw him every five minutes in Timothy’s eyes or in Michael’s smile. Only two years past Carl’s death, the memories would still be powerful whether they were good or bad.

“Everything’s all right,” Jack said. “The archangels were playing catch—”

“Who?”

“Michael and Gabriel. They knocked a picture off the wall, and the glass broke.”

“Nobody’s hurt?”

“Everybody’s fine. They’re sweeping up.”

“You left children to clean up broken glass by themselves?”

“Would you feel better about it if I supervised?”

She nodded, screwing up her face in pain from that tiny movement. “Yes, please.”

At least she’d said “please.”

Jack grabbed a trash bag from the kitchen and climbed the stairs again. The boys were doing a fine job, but he stayed, holding the bag open and pointing out a few pieces of glass they had missed.

“No more playing catch in the house,” he reminded them. “Now you need to vac—”

Before the word was out of Jack’s mouth, Michael barreled past to fetch the vacuum.

Downstairs again, Jack deposited the bag of broken glass in the kitchen trash and decided to administer a pain pill to Miranda. Like it or not, she needed one.

The homey aroma of baking lasagna surrounded Jack as he made a quick tour of the room to gather necessities. The bag from the hospital pharmacy. A spoon. An individual plastic tub of applesauce from Walmart. The mortar and pestle from the windowsill.

While the vacuum growled upstairs, he sneaked onto the porch and pulled the heavy-duty pain prescription from the bag. He ground a pill with the mortar and pestle, then tapped the powder into the applesauce and stirred. Flecks of white dotted the fruit, but he wouldn’t allow Miranda a close look. He could do nothing about the taste.

He made a clandestine return to the kitchen. The girls were there, Rebekah instructing Martha in the best way to tie a bow, but they ignored him as
he replaced the mortar and pestle on the windowsill and the pharmacy bag on top of the fridge.

Applesauce and spoon in hand, he went to Miranda’s room, stopping in the doorway. This was private territory. The room she’d shared with her husband. The bed they’d shared. It still held two pillows, as Jack’s bed still did.

A bureau of dark wood held a photo of a youthful Miranda holding an infant in miniature overalls and a blue shirt. That was Timothy, no doubt, because by the time Michael came along, Miranda wouldn’t have looked quite so young.

The older Miranda lay motionless and tiny in the big bed. Thank God, she’d grown out those ridiculous bangs. Her braid had come undone. Wisps of flaxen hair framed her cheeks and trailed onto her slender shoulders. Jack’s fingers itched to finish the job of setting her hair free. To touch it—

He gave himself a mental slap. She was his sister-in-law. Mother of six. Weird homeschooler whose religion forbade nicknames, fiction, and attractive clothing. She was a mess.

Not that he could point fingers at anybody. Guilt ridden, hypersensitive to noise, compelled to count things and talk to himself, he had issues too.

“All God’s children got issues,” he said quietly.

Her eyelids fluttered open. “What?”

“Sorry. Talking to myself.” He hesitated, battling his conscience, but the pill ploy was for her own good. He pulled the frilly upholstered chair from the corner to the bedside and sat. “I brought you something to eat.”

“No, thank you.”

“Just a few bites of applesauce.” Overcoming another twinge of guilt, he dipped the spoon into the fruit. “Open wide.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He teased her lips with the spoon.

She pulled back. “I’m not hungry.”

“If you don’t eat, you can’t build up your strength and boot me out.”

The light of battle gleamed in her eyes. She went for the spoon.

He pulled it out of her reach. “No, let me feed you. You’re right-handed?”

She nodded her head slightly on the pillow and winced.

“Thought so. If you’re a righty trying to be a lefty, you’ll make a terrible mess.”

When she opened her mouth to argue, he slipped the spoon between her lips. Now she was mad. With some luck, she’d be too angry to taste what she was eating.

“Bite number two,” he crooned and attacked again. And again and again. She glared but didn’t argue. Hungrier than she wanted to admit?

It was a tad too personal, this spoon-feeding. He could have enjoyed it, though, if it were something more exotic than applesauce. An Italian ice, for instance. Or, instead of spoon-feeding, he could imagine grapes, from his fingers to her soft lips—

“Whoa, Hanford.”

“Hmm?”

“I—nothing.” He focused on the remaining applesauce.

She wrinkled her nose. “No more. It tastes funny.”

“Store-bought never tastes as good as homemade. I noticed some fruit trees out front. Are any of them apple trees? You ever make your own applesauce?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t know or care which question she’d answered. He only wanted to take her mind off the taste.

“I’ve never had my own fruit trees,” he said. “My mom grew strawberries though. She made freezer jam with ’em.” He kept rambling until he scraped up the last of the applesauce and prevailed upon Miranda to open her mouth one more time.

She swallowed and shuddered. “Ugh.”

With his mission accomplished, he couldn’t resist teasing. “Now that you have something in your stomach, you can take a pain pill.”

“No, thank you.”

“All right. If you’re sure. I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”

She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Even that small movement made her cringe, justifying his decision to slip her the painkiller.

He returned to the kitchen. The girls had left, but Timothy was there, digging into a plastic bag on the counter. He pulled out a piece of homemade bread, then seemed to forget that he held it as his attention drifted to something outside the window.

“Maya,” he said softly.

The name Martha had mentioned. Timothy had said he didn’t know anybody named Maya—but now he did? Maybe he was so lonesome that he’d adopted his little sister’s imaginary friend. That was too weird. Too lonely.

Timothy sighed and bit into the bread.

Jack took four large, silent steps backward, into the living room, then cleared his throat and breezed into the kitchen as if he’d just arrived. “Ah, the appetite of a growing boy.”

Timothy turned around, his expression stony. “Why do you keep trying to change the way my mother wants to live?”

“Excuse me?”

“You tried to make her take pain pills.”

Jack managed not to look at her mortar and pestle. “Where did you get that idea?”

“I heard you. When you brought her home.”

Whew
. “Sometimes, pharmaceuticals are necessary.”

“Pastor Mason says
pharmakeia
has the same root as the word that means sorcery. It’s in Deuteronomy.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“I don’t. Especially if it comes from you.”

Jack set the spoon in the sink and dropped the empty applesauce tub in the trash. “Have you ever thought about trying to get along with me, son?”

Timothy took another bite of bread and spoke around it. “I’m not your son,
Jack.
”

“Why do I keep forgetting that?”

Shaking his head at the animosity that kept building between them, Jack pulled some work out of his briefcase and escaped to the porch, his only available refuge. Inside the house, he was an intruder with no space of his own.

After reading the first paragraph of an article three times without retaining it, he set it aside. Across the drive, a young tree was covered with black leaves—but then the tree exploded in a flurry of wings and chatter. The leaves were starlings. They wheeled en masse against the sky, then flew back to their perches, and the tree appeared to bear leaves again.

He stared past the bird-filled tree at the hillside and the mountains beyond it. When he’d counted the purple green peaks three times, getting a different number each time, he went inside. There were no kids in sight, but he listened for sounds of life upstairs. The two little ones were prattling together while the archangels wrangled about something. He wasn’t sure of the whereabouts of the two oldest.

Jack returned to the bedroom. Miranda seemed to be sleeping, and that was exactly what she needed. Her left hand lay on her midriff. A simple gold wedding band caught the light.

She opened her bright blue eyes, set above high cheekbones like a model’s. Even with the bruises and scratches, and despite dressing like a farm woman from a past century, she was—

A mess. And he was supposed to be taking care of her, not ogling her.

He placed his hand on hers. “How are you feeling?”

Her lips moved tentatively, then released a single word. “Tired.”

“Want me to snip off your hospital bracelet?”

“Please.”

On her bureau, he found small scissors beside a pile of embroidery thread in neat packets. He slid one of the blades between her bruised skin and the plastic, made the snip, and removed the bracelet.
HANFORD, MIRANDA E.
, it read, then gave her date of birth.

She was coming up on her thirty-fourth birthday. So young to be the mother of six and raising them alone.

Her dreamy smile demonstrated the softening effect of the narcotic. “Where’d you meet Ava?”

A startling question. Jack settled into the bedside chair, taking his time. “A soup kitchen. I mean—not
in
it, but because of it.”

Miranda frowned. “Was she poor?”

“No, not at all. I volunteered at a soup kitchen one Christmas. And Ava’s mom was working there. She dragged me home to her own Christmas dinner and introduced me to Ava.”

“She was pretty.”

“I sent pictures, didn’t I? Yes, she was pretty.”

He waited for the next question, but it never came. Well, good. The reasons for the split were no fun to talk about.

“Should we ask Rebekah to sleep in here tonight, in case you need anything?” he asked.

A moment passed. “ ’Kay, but she already … does too much.”

“She’s a good kid. She loves you. They all do.”

Her eyes watered, but she didn’t answer.

She made him think of a paper lantern, burning brightly but easily ripped to shreds or turned to ashes. She was all wrong for a bullheaded bruiser like Carl.

“Tell me how you met Carl,” Jack said.

Again, that slight delay in answering. “Bible college. Eas’burn.”

“I’ve heard of Eastburn. Did you graduate?”

“Got my degree … in one year.”

He frowned, unaccustomed to such prodigies. “Really.”

“Got my MRS.” She flashed deep dimples.

Jack laughed. “By George, the woman has a sense of humor.”

Her smile slipped away, but her silence was amiable enough.

“How old were you when you married him?”

The medicine had definitely kicked in; she’d developed more lag time between question and answer. Or she was ignoring him.

“Mmm … nineteen,” she said at last.

“And Carl was …?”

She took two slow breaths before answering. “Twenny … nine.”

“A little old to be in Bible college, wasn’t he?”

“Went back t’ finish up. Few more credits.”

Jack nodded, recalling his own pursuit of credits and degrees. “Remember the day I came by, hoping to meet him?”

Her eyelids drooped. “He was rude … t’ you.”

“True. He didn’t want anything to do with me. That leaves me wondering why you named me as the kids’ guardian.” He waited, hoping for a candid answer this time.

“I already tol’ you. I didn’ have anybody else.” Her mouth curved into a barely-there smile. “An’ you were kind … an’ you tol’ me you love truth. All truth.”

“Did I?” Not far past his thirtieth year, he’d probably said it with the flair and egoism of youth. “I do love truth, still.”

Her smile twisted to the left and vanished. She ran her hand over her face. “I feel funny.”

Jack’s conscience assailed him. The medicine was for her own good though. She needed the respite from pain.

He stroked her left hand, careful to avoid a red scratch that ran from the first knuckle of her pinkie to the delicate bone of her wrist. There probably wasn’t a square inch of skin that didn’t hurt. When she’d slammed from one ledge to another, she could have broken both arms and her legs. And, if she had, would her pastor know or care?